


Winds of Change - Interlude: Wild Flight

by AlterEgon



Series: Winds of Change [8]
Category: Enchantment Emporium - Tanya Huff, Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Gen, Injury, Rescue, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, tw: attempted suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 23:50:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/pseuds/AlterEgon
Summary: Fallen out of favor, tortured and finally cast aside to live out his life as a prisoner and slave, a former Seelie Knight is waiting for death. After an unexpected escape, he finds himself in the hands of an unlikely duo - who surprisingly have a vested interest in his continued survival.





	Winds of Change - Interlude: Wild Flight

**Author's Note:**

> A big thank you here to my beta readers - TanteTao and Jimmy C.  
> And to my readers, along with an apology for posting a week late. Life happened.

The prisoner barely raised his head at the commotion around him.

The day before, he had still forced himself to his feet when they had come with their rations for the day. Today, he wasn't sure that he would ever get up again from where he had dropped after they'd been returned to the enclosure where they were kept when not at work.

He had no illusions that anyone would bring him his dinner. Sure, someone might claim that they would, but food was scarce enough that they would have to be insane to voluntarily pass on anything they got their hands on.

Of course, some of the mortals he was kept with were just crazy enough to value honor above survival – or they might have, before they had realized what he was.

They'd been sympathetic enough when he had first been tossed into their prison, bleeding and burned and barely able to stay on his feet. That had changed when they had understood he wasn't one of them – when they had seen the patterns his wounds formed, seen the shape of his ears and realized that his blood ran green under the coarse bandages he'd been given.

He was an outcast among his own people, sentenced to serve the rest of his life with the refuse of their human catch – those unfit to be used in entertainment, by some quirk of nature too resistant to Seelie compulsion, changelings who had offended and those captured for crimes against the Seelie, never intended to be given the status of performers in the first place. He shared their sentence of prison and hard labor until death, but while his own people no longer regarded him as one of theirs, they saw him as nothing but.

They'd probably be glad enough if they found him dead by morning. Or maybe they wouldn't if his continued survival meant that someone could have a little more to eat.

He looked up, glancing through matted hair at where the guard who had handed out the evening rations was just turning and walking back the way he had come. If he had still considered forcing himself to his feet and trying to score a bite or two, it was too late now.

It didn't matter. He didn't think he'd be able to eat anyway.

His body had felt like a single, solid source of pain ever since they'd been through with him. The first time he had been punished, the order had been to cut the most prominent of the vines growing on his body from his skin. The experience had been unpleasant, but an application of magic had healed the deep slices on the side of his face quickly and the scars left behind had even looked somewhat dashing on him.

This time, they had used hot irons to sear the vines away, making sure they would never grow back – even if he lived for long enough for that to happen. His jailors had tried to beat him into submission when he had refused to answer their questions.

Nothing they had done had been able to make him give up that piece of information, however. He'd known that if he did, his life would be forfeit.

Now, he wondered if he should have just done it. In retrospect, it would have spared him a lot.

There hadn't been any magical healing this time. They had wrapped his wounds more to keep him from leaving stains on anything than by way of treatment.

He almost laughed at himself as he remembered how he had been afraid for a moment, after hearing his sentence, that they would put iron shackles on him to keep him from attempting to run while at work.

Iron poisoning, he had come to realize since, would have been the least of his problems. They had shackled him alright, but in an entirely different manner.

The pain when they had broken his ankles was still fresh in his mind, too easy to recall even as he tried to clamp down on the memory. They had used magic then, but without setting the bones first. Several repeats of the procedure had left him able to walk, slowly and carefully, while running was entirely out of the question.

His first days of labor had added stripes from the whip across his back, accompanying the strains and general muscle pain from unaccustomed work. Sleeping on the bare earth of the scant shelter they got hadn't improved his situation.

The other prisoners mostly ignored him, though he'd experienced a few strategic kicks and shoves. He was probably lucky that none of them had the energy left to take out their hatred of his kind on him more thoroughly.

To add to it all, he had woken from fitful sleep that morning with a searing pain deep in his stomach that worsened quickly as the day drew on.

He would have liked to believe that it was caused by the food they fed them; that he had caught some sort of disease from his fellow prisoners; anything really, but the thing he was quite certain was at the source of his most recent problem.

He hadn't thought about it at the time, but acted the moment he had realized that her knights were coming for him. They had been the same men and women who had once fought by his side, some even under his command at one time. He'd seen no regret in their faces, not the least bit of hesitation when they had taken his sword and torn all insignia off his clothes that had previously marked his rank among the knights.

They had searched his lodgings, but without finding the object they were looking for.

"Where is it?" they had asked him, not seeing any need to specify what 'it' was.

He'd shaken his head wordlessly, earning him a punch in the face – the first of many. He hadn't given them the information later either, sure that they would kill him the moment they had it. Now, he feared, the outcome would be precisely the same, but infinitely more slowly and painfully than they would have made it.

He closed his eyes as a new wave of pain rolled through him. He'd know he was doomed since that day the Bard and the dragon had come to their realm and he had plucked the crystal pendant off the latter's earring. He had made a decision at that moment, though if he believed the dragon's words, his action had been entirely without consequence on what happened thereafter.

While she hadn't said as much, he knew the Queen blamed him for the subsequent occurrences. He had been the one who – on her orders – had pushed his dagger into the man's heart. At least he had thought that that was what he was doing. He hadn't known he was dealing with a dragon at the time, his presence effectively masked by the stone he had taken – not stolen, since the dragon himself had told him to keep it.

But it had been his hand that had shed the dragon's blood – the very blood the Bard had thereafter used to create the abomination that now grew where the Queen had once held court.

Forcing his thoughts back to the present, he noticed that the other prisoners were gone from his sight, retired to what shelter they could find to wait out the night and get some semblance of rest before the next morning dawned, bringing with it endless labor again.

The fence that marked their enclosure wasn't high. The opening the guards used to come and go, through which they were driven out to work every day, wasn't even closed with a gate. It didn’t have to be. There was a warding spell on that fence, and on the opening. If any of the prisoners stepped into those wards, they paid for it with their lives – a painful, fiery death that left behind nothing but a small heap of ash.

Twice, he had witnessed it since his arrival. Once on the very first day, when a prisoner sentenced to death for whatever offence he had committed was driven into it by the guards. The second time had been an accident, or possibly murder among the inmates.

His gaze narrowed in on that opening in the fence. How long, he wondered, would he live as he was? How many days until starvation, dehydration or internal blood loss and infection dropped him dead at his jailors' feet? The gap in the fence seemed to beckon invitingly at the thought. Certainly, death by burning was painful – but it had gone fast those times that he had seen.

With his options clearly laid out before his inner eye, it wasn't hard to come to a decision.

Looking around one last time, he climbed to his feet, slowly and awkwardly.

He stood for a moment facing the missing gate. Then he closed his eyes as he started to walk, slowly, each step accompanied by a jolt of pain through his mistreated ankles and an answering stab from the area of his guts. He didn't want to see the fence approach. He wanted the moment when he touched the wards to hit him by surprise. Hopefully, it would all be over by the time he realized it was starting.

*

He seemed to be walking forever. Eventually, he stopped, opening his eyes to see how far he had come and barely able to believe he hadn’t reached the gate yet. What he saw made him turn and stare. He hadn't, as he had almost feared, been walking in a circle. His course had taken him to the fence all right. More even – he had gone right through it.

The wards, it appeared, hadn't tripped. He was still alive, and he was outside of the compound. He looked around, trying to spot if any of the guards were nearby, planning to have some fun with the newly escaped prisoner.

He saw nothing. All his senses told him that he was alone. He had no idea why the wards hadn't killed him. No – come to think of it, he did. The dragon hadn't tripped any sort of wards either. He'd been protected by the crystal he wore.

The crystal that was apparently hell-bent on killing him in person. In any case, it had just prevented him from shortening his pain. A new wave of it wracked his body just as he thought of it, making him double over in a useless attempt to alleviate the agony.

If he'd only had a blade or a tool at hand, he would have known what to do next. As it was, every single option he could see was at best useless and at worst going to cause him even more pain.

Returning to the compound and awaiting his fate there was out of the question. Staying out here to be found in the morning would likely lead to punishment that would make his current suffering seem like merely a minor discomfort.

A small thought wormed its way into his mind: There was a gate nearby. They had come through it when they had brought him to his prison. Maybe, if he managed to get to a warlock with sufficient medical knowledge, he might be able to keep his life and recover his health.

Magnus Bane was the first who came to mind. Returning to New York was a risk, of course. She'd be looking for him in his old haunts first, surely. He had nothing to offer in payment, though, and Magnus was known for never turning away anyone who came to his door in need.

The gate it would be, then. He'd have to hope that the travel itself wouldn't kill him, but that couldn't be helped.

Slowly, one arm pressed hard across the fire that raged in his midsection, he started to make his way into the night.

*

The gate had seemed like a good idea but, as it turned out once he arrived there, it fell into the range of useless ones.

Opening a gate like this should have been a matter of seconds for him. He went through the motions twice, and then a third time. Each time, the space inside the stone arch remained as it was: empty and useless.

Yet he could tell it was active. He merely couldn't open it.

It was possible, he thought, that they had somehow keyed a spell into it that prevented him from using it, just in case he might escape from the compound. He almost wished he could believe that.

In fact, he feared the solution was an entirely different one: The wards hadn't recognized his presence – and neither did the gate.

He closed his eyes against the threatening tears of pain and frustration. So close – and yet still unable to get away…

For a moment, he seriously considered simply lying down on the ground to await his fate. Someone would surely use the gate come morning, and then they would find him and deal with him accordingly.

That thought made him pause.

Someone would come in by gate in the morning. They'd have to.

If he could wait for it – if he could keep himself awake through the night until the magical portal opened to spit out the first guard of the day – he might be able to use that moment to step in.

He had no way to tell how much time had passed since he had walked through the wards, but he suspected that he would be in for a long wait.

He would manage somehow. He had to. And it had to work.

It was the only chance he had left.

*

He almost dozed off several times during the night, in spite of the agony in his stomach and the worsening pain in his ankles, protesting the long time spent on his feet.

He didn't dare sit down to at least alleviate the latter. Once the gate opened, time would be crucial. There was no way he would be up and through fast enough after he spotted the first flash of light inside the arch…

In the end, he almost missed the moment when it came anyway.

The first hint of a figure was already visible in the forming vortex when he stumbled forward, falling into the swirling light more than he stepped into it.

Fixing his destination in his mind was an effort that almost turned out to be too much.

To his horror, the feeling of direction that he knew he should have had the moment he was tuned in on his target failed to come.

Was this, too, the crystal?

It had to be. Otherwise, the only explanation was that the place he was trying to get to no longer existed.

The forces inside the gate were pulling on him, tearing him this way and that. He had to come up with a solution quickly. If he didn't, he'd be lost between dimensions forever, unable to emerge, unable to die. Trapped for eternity in his broken body, the pain ever increasing…

He felt the wild tumble stop as some sort of force he couldn't identify grasped him, squeezing him tightly and pulling him out of the maelstrom.

Without any idea of what was going on, he could only hope that it wasn't about to be the next in the series of events that had turned his situation ever worse throughout the night.

The impact when the gate dropped him again was sudden, jarringly painful and impossible to balance out.

He fell, hitting the cold flagstone floor hard. At least he wasn't where he had started out. That had been forest ground.

Blinking, he looked up into a face entirely unknown to him, topping a body that seemed strangely twisted in spite of being equipped with everything, as far as he could see, that a human or Seelie body should have.

Red irises were staring down at him from a face that looked utterly perplexed by what had just happened.

"Did you order dinner?" A voice asked somewhere outside of his field of vision.

*

"Did I--?" Viktor half-turned to face his companion. "No!"

Giulio Whitelake came closer. A few months of relative safety and regular meals, along with abstinence from the drug he had used for so long, had filled out his once gaunt frame and put a swagger in his step. He scrutinized the figure that had appeared in the recently repaired artifact with a frown.

"Seelie?" he asked.

Viktor turned his attention back from his housemate to the unexpected guest. The ears certainly were a giveaway. He didn't think, however, that he had ever, in all his days, seen any of the Court looking quite so miserable. While he was staring up at both of them with very little comprehension in his eyes, the confusion in his gaze was almost drowned out by pain.

"I guess." He still wasn't quite sure what to do about the new arrival. Even the mortal dwellers of the midrealms understood that they were facing an apex predator when in Viktor's presence. The man before him certainly had to know that his hours in this world or any other were numbered if Viktor chose to turn him into his next snack. Yet, he hadn't even tried to rise yet, let alone get away.

Or maybe he knew that he was as safe as one could get in the presence of a Dragon Lord. While the tang of blood was thick in the air, mixed with a suggestion of charred flesh and the more rancid smell of wounds going bad, there was another, stronger fragrance overlaid on it all.

"Looks like you might be doing him a favor if you ate him," Giulio noted drily. For a Shadowhunter, the man certainly hadn't kept a great many of the concerns about Downworlder behavior that he had once harbored.

"I'm not allowed to eat anything I can have a conversation with," Viktor pointed out in the same deadpan tone.

A shiver ran through their unbidden guest now, his lips parting as if in an effort to say something and prove that he could, indeed, be part of a conversation.

Whether it was the effort that was too much for him, or whether he had simply reached the end of whatever energy had kept him going, Viktor couldn't say. In any case, the body before him sunk in on itself, muscles suddenly relaxing as consciousness left it. The man wasn't dead. His chest continued to rise and fall with breaths too fast to be healthy.

"Besides," Viktor noted, "he stinks of my nephew. I suspect Jack wouldn't take it well if I ate one of his toys."

"How will he take it if you hand it over broken?" Giulio inquired.

Any thought of calling Jack and having him come and collect the Court instantly fled his mind. Giulio was right. Jack would never believe him that he hadn't had a hand in getting the man into the condition he was in now.

"I guess we have a guest," he growled, small plumes of smoke escaping his nostrils and lips.

Two steps took him into the artifact, where he stooped to pick up the limp figure. He suppressed a small groan. It wasn't the load of his burden – he could have carried multiple times what the Court weighed without breaking a sweat – but the painful way the movement pulled on the thick, jagged scar that ran across his shoulder and down his back where his wing had been torn off in dragon shape.

Giulio was looking at him quizzically. "What are you planning to do with him?"

When Viktor did not answer at once, the other man continued: "Unless you were trying very hard to make things hard for me, I know from experience that you have absolutely no skill at nursing. No offence."

The last words were accompanied by a grin. While Jack's idea of stashing the _yin-fen_ addicted Shadowhunter away with his uncle hadn't been greeted by their undivided enthusiasm initially, they had long settled into a most comfortable arrangement, all talk of Giulio leaving once he had recovered his health and strength forgotten.

"I have never needed to," Viktor claimed. "Usually, if I found something in this condition, I'd put it out of its misery." Which he couldn't do now, even if the Court hadn't smelled entirely unappetizing. He sighed. "We'll manage somehow."

*

"You have an amazing number of guest rooms for a hermit," Giulio observed as they reached the top of the stairs. "You'd think you're planning to invite your brothers some day."

"Only if I suddenly develop a death wish," Viktor returned. "Even Adam wouldn't hesitate to eat me."

There was no joke in his tone. The life of a Dragon Lord was a constant fight for life and death. Any weakness could mean the end of their lives at the hands of their brethren. Adam, the oldest of their clutch, may have been rather on the restrained and reasonable side most of the time, but even he wouldn't go against instinct if coming face to face with his crippled brother.

The guest rooms, as Giulio knew well, were actually meant to house customers who either needed more than a few hours to make their pick in the vast magic specialties store that covered the ground level of the building, or did not travel by portal and thus required a bit of rest between their arrival and departure. Since those rarely came alone, he always kept a few rooms ready.

The guest rooms were all the same inside: furnished simply but in high quality to convey the impression that he valued those who used them, with a bed that offered enough space for two without seeming too inviting to linger for more nights than one had to.

Entering the first of these rooms, Viktor put their unconscious guest down on the bed without moving the coverlet.

"Go get some water," Giulio said as soon as the Dragon Lord straightened. "He needs to be cleaned up."

For a moment, Viktor looked about to protest being told what to do by the other man, but he closed his mouth again as quickly as he had opened it.

As the dragon left the room, Giulio reached out to undress their charge.

He'd wanted to spare Viktor the situation of being alone with the Seelie. A lot of dragon behavior was instinct, as he had learned in the meantime. Faced with a helpless, motionless creature that qualified as food as far as his dragon senses were concerned and no one else in the room, it might have been a bit too much to ask from him to control himself – even if the potential food had somehow been marked by Jack.

While he didn't doubt that Viktor had smelled something of his nephew on the Seelie, he himself couldn't see any sort of distinguishing feature.

It quickly became obvious that their unplanned guest had been through some hard times recently – harder even than was evident at first glance. An old scar, long healed, ran across his temple and cheek on one side. Farther down on the neck, finger-broad lines of burned skin emerged from the collar of his rough-spun shirt, not far on their way towards healing and oozing slightly.

Undressing the unconscious man turned out to be harder than he had expected. It wasn't just that the limp body didn't cooperate, limbs flopping like an oversized ragdoll. The web of burns continued down the man's torso, crudely bandaged in some places but left exposed in others, where the fabric was stuck to the damaged skin.

So he was looking at a disgraced Seelie Knight? A former servant of a Seelie Court who had had the vines that had marked his family and allegiance burned from his skin? It was the only explanation he had, both for the pattern of the wounds and the lack of tattoo-like greenery.

He gave up trying to wrestle off the shirt and drew his blade instead to cut away as much of the fabric as he could. They could soak the bits that were glued on with dried blood and other fluids to peel them off later.

Trying to be gentle, he turned the Seelie onto his side to pull out the remnants of his shirt from under him.

What he saw made him suck in a sharp breath: the man's back was a mass of welts, most of them looking fresh – a crisscross of whip marks that had broken the skin and drawn blood where they crossed and where there was bone close to the surface.

"Not just a disgraced knight, but an escaped slave?" he muttered. "Just wonderful. Now we're in trouble with Jack if we lose you, and in trouble with some Seelie ruler if we keep you."

He continued his work anyway, noting without surprise now that the burned tracks continued down the slender legs. Whoever had done this had been thorough.

Infection had set in in some of those wounds, but it hadn't progressed far enough to warrant the Seelie's current condition. While there was bruising discoloring the pale skin, hinting at more than one thorough beating, it didn't seem severe enough to suggest major internal bleeding.

The door opened, announcing Viktor's return.

"My best guess is that he's dehydrated and needs to eat," Giulio announced without looking up. "Nothing I can see that would put him in this condition otherwise… unless you smell any magic on him?"

"None other than Jack's," Viktor replied as he came over to put down a basin of water on the nightstand and pick up the washcloth and towel he had draped over his arm. He sounded relieved at the prospect of an easy solution. "I'll have the brownie in the kitchen make some sort of soup for him then."

With that, the dragon handed over the utensils he held, turned and retreated from the room again, leaving the task of washing their charge to the Shadowhunter.

Giulio rolled his eyes at the closing door as he soaked the washcloth to drip water onto the remaining patches of fabric.

*

The next morning dawned, and their guest wasn't well.

Of course, he hadn't been well when he had arrived either, but their efforts at improving his condition weren't going at all the way they had intended them to.

The kitchen brownies had whipped up a bowl of simple but nourishing soup, and they had harbored hopes that getting some sustenance into the Seelie would go a way towards restoring him far enough to deliver him to Jack without any risk to Viktor's continued survival.

Feeding him the soup one spoonful at a time had been easy enough.

They had left him to sleep after that, with a spell rigged that would alert them as soon as he woke.

That alarm never went off, and when they checked on their charge in a free moment, they stood and stared in horror.

Where they had expected to see improvement, they were facing the opposite. A sheen of sweat was glistening on features distorted by pain, the blankets thrown off the bed by the writhing body. Neither of them was sure what body temperature was common for a Seelie, but they were equally certain that something approaching Viktor just after changing shape didn't come close to normal.

Expecting infection in his wounds – though neither of them had any idea how that would have happened after Giulio's careful clean-up work earlier that day – they had undone the fresh bandages, only to find that there was barely a sign of it in the burns. The streaks on his back were even reacting well to the salve Viktor had gotten from the store.

Not sure what else to do, they bathed him in cool water, trying to bring his temperature down a little. It was clear that he was in pain now, even in his unconscious state, but they couldn't determine the source of it. Unsure of what else to do, they fed him more fluids to replace the amounts he was sweating out and retreated to their bed, hoping for improvement by morning.

Morning had come, and their guest was far from improved. If anything, the Seelie's fever had climbed even higher. As their approach disturbed him, he started to mutter unintelligibly under his breath, words quickly slurring into moans of pain.

He jerked away from Giulio's touch now, though there was barely any strength left in his movements.

The Shadowhunter reached for the Seelie's hand, fingers probing to find a pulse. It took several attempts before he did.

Looking up at Viktor, he shook his head sadly.

"I can't even count that," he admitted. "His heart is going too fast. There is something… very seriously wrong with him."

Viktor studied their ill guest for another moment, his head cocked to one side into a position that made him look almost raptor-like.

A small shiver ran through him as he visibly forced himself to come to a decision. "I'm calling Jack," he announced, pulling out his phone. "I may be able to talk my way out of this, but if he dies on us we're in trouble for good."

*

The day after ritual was a day for winding down and relaxing.

Most of them had gone to Mount Royal after they were done, those participating and those guarding joining there for what Charlie's sisters had irreverently dubbed the aftershow party, enjoying the pool, the pies and the feeling of power still coursing through them.

The children had had their sleepover with Lyla and Madzie, supervised by some of the older pre-ritual girls and boys. Mostly girls. Boys were still sorely lacking in the Calgary branch, rare as they were in the family to begin with.

Ritual had been something special this year. With their friends freshly unfettered, Air had met Earth for real, in a rush of power that he hadn't ever felt before. Then again, he hadn't been participating in ritual for all that long himself, and Charlie insisted that she'd felt similar torrents of energy flow back when Auntie Catherine had anchored First.

He was curious now about what would happen if Catherine were to anchor their circle. He knew better than to suggest it, though. Allie's grandmother was persona non grata in Calgary and had been banned from entering the city perimeter years ago. He hadn't ever met her, and Charlie had informed him that he didn't want to. He trusted his wife to know what she was saying when she used that tone.

Their Nephilim friends' wings had faded through the day as they let the power ebb out of them. Hodge and Christopher, who had opted out of active participation and instead joined those guarding and protecting their group from undesired company, were still trailing bits of metaphysical matter. The Aunties had been unhappy about the loss of two males for the circles, but Allie had been adamant about leaving them the decision – and pointing out that they weren't a 'loss' as such, since they hadn't ever been there before.

As the day drew on, people had retired to nap as they felt the need. Back East, he'd been told, those living farther from the center of the family's power would have started to depart during the day. Here, where everyone was still living within the same city, no one felt the need to break up the assembly earlier than they absolutely had to.

The sun was on its way back down to the horizon now, and Jack was just considering another jump into the pool when the phone in his pocket went off at full volume.

"Shut up. You're muted," he muttered as he pulled it out. The family phones had a habit of overriding any settings they made on them, but they usually did so with good reason.

He frowned at the caller ID.

"Uncle Viktor?" he asked without greeting. "I'm a bit busy here. What is it?"

He saw the raised eyebrows around him. Apparently, most of the family nearby didn't think that lounging by a body of water qualified as being busy. Well, they weren't dragons, and for a dragon, basking was most definitely a relevant activity, only to be interrupted in dire need.

"I fixed the Traveller and something of yours stumbled out. I'm afraid it's dying. I swear I had nothing to do with that, but you really need to come over."

His uncle's words made him do a double-take.

"Come again?"

"I fixed the Traveller and—"

Jack made an impatient sound. "I got the part about the Traveller and that's fine because we might need it again. What 'of mine' are you talking about?" He was thinking hard. It couldn't be one of his other uncles. Viktor would have referred to them differently.

"Again?" The older dragon sounded as if he was flaming at the thought and had only barely missed the phone. "You almost broke it the last time you—"

"Uncle Viktor!" Jack interrupted. He was aware that he now had the attention of everyone in his closer vicinity. "Do you think this is the right moment for that? You said you have something of mine and you nearly killed it." That wasn't exactly what he had said, of course. Jack was reasonably certain that Viktor assumed that he had had some hand in whatever condition the as-yet undefined creature was in, though. He surely wouldn't have been quite so fast to insist he hadn't.

He put the phone on speaker just in time so everyone could hear his uncle's next words.

"I swear we only cleaned its wounds and fed it some soup and water. It was very weak when it arrived, and we thought it'd be better to not return it to you in that state."

There was a sound in the background, and Jack thought that he could hear Giulio say: "He."

"How do you know he's one of mine?" Jack inquired.

The answer came speedily. "It sti—smells of you."

"He," Jack corrected, then sighed. "I'll be over and have a look."

Without waiting for a response, he snapped the phone shut and looked around the assembly, eyebrows raised slightly. "I'll make a Gate. Anyone care to join me?"

*

Viktor met them with an incredulous stare when they emerged from the gate. This time, Jack hadn't bothered to bring them out far enough from his uncle's place to not disturb any workings he had going on.

"Since when are you travelling with an entourage, Nephew?" he asked.

Jack returned a shrug. "I thought it befitted my status as a prince," he claimed. It wasn't a surprise that Charlie had chosen to come with him. Izzy and Alec had volunteered as well, intending to use the opportunity to talk to Giulio about the effects of their rune deletion, and Magnus had joined his partner immediately.

Viktor scoffed as he turned towards the Lightwood siblings. "Where did you leave your tattoos?"

"We decided we're past that age," Alec shot back. "We're all grown up now, so we had them removed."

The dragon didn't respond to that, but indicated the open door instead. "Come in then. I'd rather not deliver a corpse to you."

They wholeheartedly agreed with that.

The only rooms Izzy, Alec and Magnus had ever been to in the house were some of the shop rooms and the basement setup with the Traveller artifact. They were looking around with interest as Viktor guided them up a wide flight of stairs, then another, smaller one.

Moments later, they found themselves in a nicely furnished guest room. The occupant of the comfortable bed did, indeed, look closer to death than life. Weak moans of pain escaped from his lips as the older Shadowhunter was making a valiant effort to alleviate the patient's fever with cloths soaked in cool water.

"I see," Jack said when he took in the dying Seelie.

"Meliorn," Izzy stated, reaching out for her former lover's hand. "What happened to him?"

"We don't know." That was Giulio. "He came out of the Traveller downstairs. Looks like someone tortured him. Vik says he smells of Jack, but I have no idea how that would even happen."

They looked at Jack expectantly, who seemed a lot less surprised than everyone else.

"I gave him a crystal when we met," he explained. "It was charged with my energy. That's what my Uncle is smelling."

"He had no crystal on him," Giulio pointed out, frowning. "I can tell you that for sure. I undressed him to clean up his wounds."

"It's on him now," Jack returned. "Or, I suspect, inside him."

He was hit by several uncomprehending looks at once.

"Inside him?" The older man turned his stare at Meliorn. "How would it get _into_ him?"

"Through his mouth, I suspect," Jack stated, his tone suggesting that it was obvious. "If he'd put it in the other end, it would have come out again by now for sure."

Giulio looked somewhat sick at the thought.

"Why'd he swallow a crystal?" Viktor's eyes were narrowed as he focused on his guest. "Why would anyone?"

"Maybe he liked the taste of Jack," Jack shot back. "Seriously, though, my best bet is that he had to hide it. Since it wasn't ever intended for human – or seelie – ingestion, I suspect it caused some damage in there and that's what we're seeing now."

Viktor shook his head. "Well, take him, and your crystal, then, and get lost. We have wasted quite enough time on your friend."

"You're charming as always, Uncle," Jack observed, though without any real anger in his voice. "Alec, can one of you carry him? He'll travel more easily through the Wood than a Gate."

*

Catarina stepped back from the bed, lowering her hands and shaking her head.

"I'm sorry," she said as she looked at Jack. "As you said, the stone is made to deflect magic and make it flow around it without touching it. I can't get it out magically any more than Magnus could."

They hadn't really assumed that she would, but they'd wanted to give it a try.

"Plan B then," Magnus said. "You're in charge. Tell us what to do."

The other warlock gave him a small grin. "The day I get to order around Magnus Bane – priceless," she announced. "I'll be happy if you can clean the room, the bed, any tools, the patient and us. Sterile-clean that is. I don't assume you can find us some Seelie blood to give him?"

Elessar, who had joined them when they had returned and settled Meliorn in a guest room in the house the Lightwoods shared with Magnus and Clary, shook his head. "Not on short notice," he told her.

"Then I'll have to close up any blood vessels we cut as we work. Has anyone of you ever cut open a Seelie before?"

Alec pointed at his sister. "Iz does that sometimes."

"I'm a pathologist!" she shot back, glaring at him. "I've never done it while the subject was still alive, and they're also no longer feeling any pain by then!"

"I'll take care of the pain," Charlie promised. "I'll sing him under as far as he can go, and he won't feel a thing. Pretty sure that'll work in spite of the crystal."

Izzy hesitated. She was sure there was some rule that said you weren't supposed to operate on people you knew, let alone your former lover. Even more so if you weren't a doctor. But none of the others had anything approaching her understanding of Seelie anatomy. They might be able to show them _where_ to cut, but it wouldn't be easy to explain to them how deeply.

If she agreed to do it and something went wrong, she'd be forever blaming herself. If she made someone else do it and something went wrong, she'd do the same, and so would, most probably, the person who had taken over in her place.

She moved forward, watching as Catarina took a set of tools from her bag and placed them on a low table.

"Alec, can you hand your sister what she needs? I'll tell you what and when, but I will need my hands for the spells."

Alec had the good sense not to even try to get out of his assigned role. He simply moved into place and stood where indicated, letting Magnus' cleansing magic wash over him, while Charlie settled in a chair off to the side and readied her guitar for a powerful lullaby.

"This is where my magic starts to be deflected," Catarina said, moving a finger across the exposed skin on Meliorn's abdomen to indicate the spot. "We'll have to go looking for it precisely with more mundane means, so you'll want a wide cut. Let me know when you're ready."

Izzy picked up a scalpel of the same kind she would be using in an autopsy. "Right." She said. "Ready."

*

The last thing Meliorn remembered was looking up at a Dragon Lord who was debating with someone about the merits of making him the main course of the day's dinner. Thinking of it, he found himself surprised that the decision had apparently been made in favor of his continued survival.

He wasn't sure if he had it in him to be thankful for it.

The pain in his stomach had changed in quality, but not lessened in intensity.

Still, strangely, the rest of his injuries was feeling much better than they had before. That couldn't be right. He hadn't been able to reach a warlock, or even to articulate that he needed one, never mind why. He shouldn't have lived for long enough for that to happen while the crystal was doing who-knew-what inside him.

Trying to make sense of his situation, he started to take inventory.

He was lying on a mattress, covered with a light blanket. He could feel bandages on the worst of the burns, though the discomfort from that was negligible. Warmth and light filtering through his closed lids suggested that he was close enough to a window to be bathed in sunlight.

There was a scent in the air that woke associations in him immediately. Isabelle Lightwood. She'd worn that perfume…

His eyelids felt as if someone had glued them down, and it took an exercise of willpower to force his eyes open.

Even once he had managed, it took a moment before he managed to process what he saw.

He was in a room that was set up simply and rather impersonally, suggesting a guest room instead of one that belonged to any specific person. He could spot runes in various locations, though they were of an odd, almost transparent quality that he had never seen before.

The source of the perfume scent was, indeed, Isabelle – or someone who looked very much like Isabelle Lightwood but had forgotten to put on her runes to impersonate her. She had just reached for his hand and was probing to find the pulse.

Raising his other hand, he was shocked to spot a thin tube feeding some sort of liquid into his arm.

His body stiffened as he jerked his hand from the woman's grip. Hadn't Valentine and his experiments been enough? Had he ended up in the hands of more insane Nephilim, conducting their insane projects?

"Whoa," she said, the moment of surprise quickly overcome. "Easy, Meliorn. You're safe."

"Safe?" he blurted. His throat and mouth felt dry, and even swallowing a few times didn't do much to improve that. "How is this safe?" His hand felt incredibly heavy when he reached over to grasp the tube, ready to pull it from his body.

She followed his motion quickly, catching his wrist and preventing him from completing his plans. "Leave that in. You need fluids and something to give your body energy to heal. You won't be able to eat for a little while, so we're giving it to you that way. Jack's crystal got into contact with your blood and left some of its power inside you. Catarina couldn't heal the tears it made magically. It's all stitched up and fixed as far as we could. You'll be fine, but you need to heal a bit before you can try food – otherwise you'll be back to pain and infection and fever."

He wanted to snarl at her, tell her that he was in pain _now_ , too, but his mind latched on to the name she had mentioned.

"Catarina?"

"Catarina Loss," she clarified. "She'll be by later to check on you."

"I don't believe you," he told her flatly. "And you can drop that glamor. Trust me - I know where Isabelle's runes are. Every single one of them."

He had expected anger at the statement, or maybe denial. Instead, she smiled down at him. "I know you do. I remember all the times you kissed them and… did other things with them. I fear that right now, that's the best memory I have of them."

She certainly sounded like Isabelle. Still…

"We first met the summer after I turned fifteen," she said in reaction to his reluctance. "I'd just started discovering all the things I could do with the right clothes and the right make-up and you told me you'd never seen a Shadowhunter more beautiful before. I knew you were just flattering me, but it was still nice to hear. I've told you that before, too – the night before we first slept with each other. I thought we'd stay at your place that night, but you took me to the park, and we had an incredible night under the stars."

"The runes…" he began, hesitatingly. What she said was true, and, what was more, she _felt_ like Isabelle to him. That part of him that should have alerted him to untruths and subterfuge wasn't going off.

"They've turned into more of a hindrance than an asset recently. We'll give you the details when you're feeling better. We're no longer with the Clave, though."

"We?" he repeated, trying to convince himself that she had just truly said what he thought he had heard.

"Alec, Jace, Clary and I. A few others. We're—"

She was interrupted when the door to the room opened, admitting a young man Meliorn couldn't place immediately, though there was something familiar about him. He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt covered by a jacket of what could only be a mundane sports team. The heavy glamor that concealed his Seelie features from mundanes had little effect on Meliorn's perception.

"Iz, I brought you the— Oh. He's up!"

"I wouldn't call it 'up' yet," Isabelle said. "But it does appear he's awake."

*

Meliorn didn't know whose clothes he was wearing, and he wasn't about to ask. Right now, he was relieved enough that he had managed to dress himself. It had been a lot more exhausting than a simple task like that should be.

It was a strange place that he had ended up in, the merger of the mundane world and the shadow world, the cooperation – and, as it seemed, cohabitation – of mundanes, Nephilim and a choice of various Downworlders something he never would have thought possible.

Still, he wasn't used to being cooped up inside for so long, and he needed to get more fresh air than the small breath that came in through the window. He'd been surprised that all Catarina had said when he'd finally brought it up was that there was a park across the street.

They'd brought him a change of loose, comfortable clothes with the small breakfast the warlock had decided to allow him to try, and left it with a caution that he could ask someone to go with him if he wasn't sure he'd manage the way back on his own.

He hadn't needed assistance to get to the adjoining bathroom for a few days, but he knew from that experience that walking hadn't become more pleasant than it had been since his imprisonment. Catarina had promised to fix his ankles as soon as his body had finished healing everything else and regained some strength on top of that. He hoped that wasn't an empty promise.

Looking at the flower pots spread generously in the room made him smile. They'd brought a bit of nature to him while he hadn't been able to venture out. Isabelle had had some new addition for him every time she'd come by. Seeing her – or her brothers – without their runes still felt strange.

He wondered if he would have the energy to pay them a return visit after a trip to the park. Maybe, he mused, soaking up some of the power of nature in spring would actually boost him a bit. And they'd said their house was right nearby. He'd been taken there first, they'd told him, but decided to relocate him to his strange shared home, where there was a larger number of people able and willing to share the task of taking care of him while he couldn't take care of himself. The matter-of-course way in which they had done so, for a complete stranger, hadn't ceased to amaze him.

And then there was the Seelie, whose presence had occupied quite a bit of Meliorn's thoughts while he'd been recovering.

Most of the doors to the hallway in front of his room stood open, giving him a view into what looked like some people's private quarters.

The hallway eventually took him into a larger room, which seemed to be a combination of shared living room and kitchen. At the moment, only a single person was using it, busy putting dishes back into cabinets.

Meliorn blinked, stared, and finally asked the question that had been burning in his mind every time the man had taken a turn sitting with him or helping him with whatever needed to be done.

"Why are you doing this?"

The other Seelie turned around, unsurprised at being spoken to. He had probably heard Meliorn's approach since he'd left his room. "The dishwasher was done," he said. "If I want to put something new in, I need to take everything else out first. That's how they work."

Meliorn almost rolled his eyes at that.

"I know who you are." It had taken him a couple of days to place the face. The behavior was so at odds with the identity and the ever-present sports team clothing hadn't helped.

"Fine," the man who called himself Elessar said. "Keep it to yourself."

"You're Rior—"

"We don't talk about that here." The other man's voice was sharp. "I am Elessar. University student, basketball player and partner of Melissa Gale. Everything else is irrelevant."

"Do they know?" Meliorn was starting to wish that he could pull out one of the chairs by the table and sit down, but doing so in the presence of royalty wasn't really an option. Not even if it wasn't _his_ prince. Not even if he didn't strictly speaking _have_ a sovereign anymore since his queen had cast him out. Not even if said royalty insisted on doing the dishes and asked to be addressed by a mundane name.

The corner of Elessar's mouth twitched upwards. "They know how to ignore something when asked. I suggest you learn the same, and quickly. Now sit, before you fall over and I have to carry you back to bed."

Faced with that prospect, Meliorn did as told. "You probably shouldn't even be talking to me." In fact, he thought, he shouldn't have addressed Elessar to begin with. No matter what he was pretending to be, he remained a prince. _He_ , in contrast …

Elessar quickly put away the last dishes and came over, taking a chair across the corner of the table.

"I am not in any manner affiliated or allied with the one you once called your queen," he said, clearly enunciating every word. "Neither is my father. No one here will spirit you away back to Faerie and deliver you to those people. Besides, Jack would eat us if we tried."

Meliorn couldn't help a small laugh. "Jack. How do you get along with him?"

"Well enough," Elessar claimed. "Even my bodyguard made his peace with him. He's okay, as dragons go. But you know that."

"He almost got me killed."

"Swallowing a piece of rock almost got you killed," the other man corrected. "Give credit where credit is due. Do you play?"

Meliorn frowned in confusion. "Play what?"

"Basketball. What else is there to play?"

He shook his head. "Never tried. And I can't run or jump now." He was reasonably certain that both were involved in that game.

"Catarina will fix that. Then we'll teach you." There was a light shining in Elessar's eyes that made him look as if he truly looked forward to that.

"Why would you do that?" Meliorn's voice reflected the confusion he felt. "I'm a disgraced knight, stripped of rank and vines. You probably shouldn't even be talking to me."

Elessar gave a good-natured chuckle. "Out here, you're whatever you want to be." He placed his hand on Meliorn's in a gesture that was probably supposed to be reassuring.

It would have felt more so without the almost electric jolt that went through him at the touch.

He met the prince's eyes – he didn't think he'd ever be able to see him as Elessar the student, rather than Prince Riordan, son of a king powerful enough that his own Queen had never dared raise her hand against him or his. "What could I ever be, as a Seelie without affiliation?"

The smile on Elessar's lips looked almost wistful. "Free," he said. "You can be free."


End file.
